Microsoft’s Windows Store is nagging users to update to the latest version of Windows 10

MICROSOFT HASonce again managed to annoy people with pop ups – this time in the Windows Store.

There’s now a banner announcement on the landing page of the app which warns you if your Windows edition is older than April (cough – barely) 2018.

“Join the millions of people who are up to date!” exclaims the message, as if being on the latest version of Windows is some sort of magical club where we can all enjoy our privacy violations together.

There’s a link too, which takes you to an online nagging tool which amongst other things reminds you that: “Windows Defender Antivirus delivers comprehensive, ongoing and real-time protection against software threats like viruses, malware and spyware across email, apps, the cloud and the web.”

An impressive claim from the company about a product that has finished dead last in a number of bench tests and nearly caused themselves to be sued by rivals for non-competitive behaviour.

The reasoning for the nagging is legitimate enough – in three months time, the Anniversary Update will become End of Life in accordance with the standards for builds of Windows.

Failure to update will mean a loss of security updates and that means you’re not much better off than with Windows XP.

So let’s be utterly fair and say that on this one, they’ve more or less got nagging rights. It’s relevant, it’s necessary and it’s in the users best interest. It is, nevertheless quite aggressive and… well… Microsoft-y.

If it wasn’t for all the other crap it has pulled we’d probably be more receptive to this, which is sort-of-helpful.

If you’re not on the original Anniversary Update, then none of this will appear for you yet, but your time is coming. Updates to Windows 10 have a lifespan of two years, 9 October being the first such deadline.

Indeed, Windows 10 itself already has an end date of 13 October 2020, with five years support after that.

As long as the nagging stays at a low level like this, we’ll probably let it slide. What will be interesting is the first week of October, which is likely to see Microsoft in such a blind panic that you’ll probably end up getting pop-ups when you’re sexting.

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